under his eye iii

then i was home for the
first year of high school
alienated, scared,
quietly unusual
with no idea
what was wrong with me
needing people,
passions and a method of being
a year later,
on a coach to france,
i met k and c
and then p and s and g
(most of whom i fell in love with,
one of whom i am still in touch with)
who accepted me
when i rang their doorbells
every day

i am not sure how normal or otherwise it is to simply ring someone’s doorbell in the modern day. i suspect that most people now are like me now, and get the fright of a lifetime if someone unexpectedly rings the doorbell. but from age who knows eight, maybe, to at some point in midteenage, i would just go to the pal’s door and ring the doorbell and see if they were in if i wanted to hang out. even if nobody was in at least i got a walk.

also, remember to vote.

under his eye ii

crying to my mother
in the phone booth
an undiagnosed autistic
immature youth
unable to verbalise,
understand, explain
the abhorrent situation
i was in…
i had no way to pray
for succour
no deus ex machina
from the kirk

i seem to think about the pope more than most catholics. i always found church confusing as a child. jesus was a hippy peacenik sort of character. church people seemed much more stern. fundamentally uncool. it’s hard to imagine jesus ordering the burning of witches, or driving a land rover, or paying his workers a subsistence wage, or speculating in capital. or coveting wealth generally. yet so many rich people claim to be christians. like, as if they think the lower orders are too thick to spot the contradiction.

unthemed

@corner 31 march 2026

i was an absurdly anxious child, and i suppose i must have known it wasn’t normal to be so anxious, yet i spent most of my life in extreme denial about it. then i was on a weird trip for work to a sort of cult gathering and i guess it made me think about historic childhood excursions and related feelings. i’m calling this

thinking about my history as a ferocious blusher on the weird work week road trip

storm away with amy
on the weird work week
road trip
yet wherever i go
i’m always me
and find myself adverse to
reverse columbo,
so i hold my tongue
pathologically, i realise,
in the hotel power shower
my beetroot trauma
my painful blushing
the loss of limb control
the shame and the denial
too scared to ask
for the haircut i wanted
until i was almost middle aged
nobody ever explains
the comb numbers
it’s not taught in school
barbershops remain
somewhat mysterious to me

i maintain that all my poetry is just one long poem and is to some extent a linear diary of the sort of things i do and think. i just write little things down as they occur to me, then work out what to do with it later. but sometimes, i write so much poetry in a day that it ends up just naturally telling a little story.

write poetry before the ball

drop the pen on the latest line
i’ve finally found my voice
then i read some early stuff
ah man i’ve lost it
may as well just do puns
so i moan about michelle mone
she pulled herself up
by the brastraps
filled her cups and ran
eventually manage
to tie my bow tie
go to the ball
it’s too loud
wish i had earplugs
go to the loo
do the thing where i
hover my hands under the
paper towel dispenser
expecting hot air
i suppose i’ll go home
and write poetry

i studied philosophy and politics and i’m autistic so i’m never sure how much other people know about philosophy so just to explain the reference, john locke was a philosopher who used the term ‘social contract’. it is a sort of philosophy that seeks to examine the circumstances in which people would and should submit to government. this philosophy was extremely influential on the drafters of the us constitution. for locke, private property was very important. so much so, that everyone must have, ‘as much and as good.’

life under actually existing capitalism iii

as much and as good,
john locke said
the social contract’s been
frustrated i pled
everything’s owned
there’s no land left
if they could meter it
they’d charge for breath

the tech is quite useful
although it surveils us
we pray the welfare state
won’t further fail us
for nearly two decades
crises have availed us
imposed by the rich
to distract and curtail us

and finally, isn’t this just the worst timeline. where are we headed? the nun murderer and pop singer katy perry hasn’t had a hit in years and yet bezos not only rocketed her into space, he also returned her safely. what a pointless technology.

we have to stop katy perry and her gang of space villains

i should prepare
for social stress,
but foolishly
don’t push myself
so katy perry’s
in her spaceship
i’m burnt out
and need a facelift
she killed a nun,
i liked it not
oligarchic turn
make it stop

under his eye i

since the pope died,
i’ve had religion on my mind
child protection and it’s opposite,
no child’s left behind
i endured the kirk
and a ton of bunk
in the mid nineties
on a coach trip
to innsbruck
some older kids and me
i only joined the club to play football.
how did i end up here?

i’ve been on a bit of a poetic frenzy recently. i feel an urge to overproduce poetry, to give me some spare time to do other things. but then i have a spare moment and i work on some more poetry. because it’s fun. so maybe i’ll never finish the bloody novel i’m working on. it’s called ‘the san estaban mayoral election of 2016’, subtitle ‘a historical novel by n.n. benn’

chorus 4 (the fourth chorus of the love epochal part 3: giletdonism)

see the month out
with a crow loop,
swelter on the juliet
manifest strength
and stability
unemployed and full e it

get tucked in for the gilet years
keep it strong and stable
despite hopes and fears
a pudding waits
at the end of the repast
let’s hope we get there
at last

i had quit my job! i hadn’t yet started my new job! i was sunbathing on the juliet balcony. life was good. see you next month when, you’ll never guess, the poem continues.

ecolalia iv

a trio, sub-mantric
cerulean bohemian
utilitarian
sub deeper, throwaway
discount viscount
shagatha christie
sing along, sing aloud,
twirl in the street right now
a human positioning system
a global grid
of great big bricks
reggie regular
or reggae reggae
i’ve somehow
run out of chilli powder

it is important to personal branding to know your style. the meme is that you should have three words that describe your style, and you should only invest in new clothing assets if they are coherent with your stockpile. my summary trio is ‘cerulean, bohemian, utilitarian.’ hope that helps if you are considering buying my clothing. size xs/s depending on brand.

anyway, i won’t bother explaining any further of what is mostly an indulgent nonsense poem. please don’t unsubscribe (unless you don’t want to receive further emails from me).

what breaks through

@poet’s corner 18 march 2026

less what breaks through. but more, what i wish i could break through, to other people. this is called

the futile push

i decry the wasted effort
of nationalism
if you look for
a thing that isn’t there
finding it
will take forever
but we keep looking
for sovereignty
as if it could keep us warm
or fill our bellies
when we have for long
lived in an age of empires
we bear the fasces epochal
as the colonial ceasefire breaches
yet more racist murders
sanctioned.
victory is hollow.
temporary.
achievement too
the only things
of meaning
are the gentle process
of making
of caring
of loving

nationalism is an addictive mixture of complacency, historical delusions, perverse grudges, jingoism, racism, fairy tales and holy violence. the struggle of one is the struggle of all people, of all lands. so i now want to offer everyone a positive vision for the future.

the 13th month

the bell chimed,
it’s time
to introduce the thirteenth month
rationalise the calendar
with months of 28 days
plus an extra day,
a global holiday
for all workers
during which the bourgeois financiers
shall man the (beer) pumps
and another one the same each leap year
and the extra month should be a holiday too
slide it in
between july and august
call it hedonia,
for a free summer of bliss

so, i was buzzing for my new society, with its new, quite lazy calendar. i started developing a utopian framework of government. but, ultimately, power corrupts, so i decided i would do my fellow citizens a favour by seizing it all for myself as a sort of sacrificial benevolent dictator, with questionable priorities.

why i support scottish independence but only if i get to be in charge

i long to modernise scotland
to the revue of my imagination
to restrict actors to a single role
depiction in our nation
and making them legally change their name
to the one they portray in fiction
punishable by death
and claiming global jurisdiction
then i will reduce the toothbrushing time
from two minutes to 90 seconds
and thus sanction my cohort
to luxuriate over breakfast
then i will retire to
the camper-van i’ll embezzle
proud of my augmentation of
our cultural endeavour

thank you, remember to vote on the 7th of may

bonus material (all untitled)

how many times
must i scan my tesco club card
at the railway turnstile
before they put me
in a care home
as i fear i may have
already gone over

remember library tickets
little card folders
watch the librarian
slip the ticket
into the folder
file it in the wide drawer
slide it closed
hand me my book
giving me gentle
asmr tingles

i once threw a ball
and simultaneously
caught an identical ball
i chucked the ball
i saw it fly out of my hand
felt it ping my grasp
yet there it still was
within my fingers
for a brief moment
the laws of physics
time, space,
cause and effect
were all up for grabs
i’d sliced into the warp hole
then a saner hypothesis
occurred to me
though i note
it was not proven

my pre-millennial childhood

o index finger
like a long toe
my pinky also
unusually small
little wonder
my handwriting’s unclear.
correction fluid
another go, please
i subtract seven letters
and get left with rect o fud
register my domain
with the nineties web dial up
to bravenet guestbooks
and fansites and bandsites
try and capitalise
on the dot com boom
all you need is a brand
profits will come soon
the scars of hubris
are born by us
inferior designers
and i wear them fine

i’m not sure if my little pinky actually has any impact on my handwriting. but if you remove enough letters from the ‘correction fluid’ we had in lieu of tip-ex in school, you could make it say rectofud. so they nearly all said this. pass me the rectofud, one might say, after an egregious spelling error.

as a 13 year old boy, i thought, i will set up a record label called rectofud. i made the website. it was the dot com boom. i figured that was all i needed to do to make my millions. it was fun anyway. the web was new and exciting and fun and i had my own little place on it, before myspace and bebo came along and gave everyone their own little webpage and none of my school friends had any need to post on the rectofud guestbook any more.

alanis said it first so it’s ok

i go to bed early
i wake up late
french kissing won’t be tolerated
on this date
a collegiate day
leaves me rough
in my navel
looking for fluff
two roles away
on down the hill
wine and dine
(and sixty nine)
on a jagged little pill

this is mostly just silly, but i have been thinking a lot about belly button fluff recently. there used to always be fluff in my belly button if i had been wearing clothes that day. most days if not all that would be. but there is never ever fluff in it any more. i still usually wear cotton tee shirts. i still have a belly button. and i’ve been basically the same size for 30 years at this point. i don’t understand what has changed. if anyone knows, please let me know.

if i wasn’t called n n benn i’d have gone for red blaes

a pontiff
post-pontificating
has a point if hope remains
but dust will
surely settle
on his line in the blaes
departure
led suggestion
ask always ‘what is right?’
rather than
the usual
‘what did we do last time?’

with the changing of the popes i was thinking a lot about religion i guess. the last pope was alright. definitely better than ratzinger. but i have a lot of hope for pope bob. not that i’m a catholic. but a pope is a powerful man. i wish the president was more like pope bob.

red blaes was a sort of surface that used to be common for football and hockey pitches. i skinned my knees on it many times. a sort of pink dusty cinder with little jaggy stones in it. there is still some of it about. anyway, you could draw a line on it, like sand.

and its good that the future isn’t like the past. let’s not give up yet on making the world a bit better for the next generations of earthlings, plants, animals and mushrooms alike.